You dream of Ghent. A city in silvery light, scattered across vistas of uninterrupted stalactites, mesas and overhangs. Barges ride its waters, raised on a great lock that rises from Jericho, where the red rivers meet the Lys. Books rain from the stalactites: a charity for poor benighted London. Its citizens are numerous, legion. And above them all, a black lion roars and roars with a voice of thunder.
Firmament Chapter Four has arrived! Travel though a great inversion to find the medieval city of Ghent, dangling upside down over the Neath below. Intrigue at the Duchessâ court, feast inside the grand halls of the Gravensteen, dream with your officers, venture deeper into the mysteries of the Stacks and find the source of the ghosts of Burgundy.
Firmament is Fallen Londonâs current major expansion, a main story arc thatâs free to all players. It begins once you have progressed the Railway story arc as far as Ealing Gardens, although will require more progress in the Railway as chapters progress.
As part of this chapter, youâll unlock permanent access to a new location: the duchy of Burgundy, a medieval city translated into the Neath. Ride out in a hunting party, pursue the dreams of kings, politic with the ducal court and uncover the secrets concealed beneath the gold and glory. Not all that glittersâŚ
Continue the story of Firmament from Zenith. If youâve not yet begun Firmament, look for a card in London named âThe Fire in the Looking Glass.â
Tatterdemalion was right: wow, Ghent is pretty big! Iâm 60 actions in and only just starting into the Stacks. Had to run away from the cops three times, and a few things that look like theyâll unfold over the course of a good long while.
Summerâs interlude and theories are much appreciated.
Honestly so far this chapter fixes all of the issues Iâve been having with the newer updates for the past several months wrt Chapter 3 of Firmament and the recent exceptional stories.
A-are they using secret checks now? On a card that called for Persuasive, I got a failure based on insufficient PoC! I reported it in case itâs just a bug, but it also makes sense in context so is plausibly one of the surprises Failbetter had planned for us.
I will do Firmament Chapter Four (and Candlefinder Society: Dead Puppet) at a later time because I am now farming for Scrips to get my Hellworm before Whitsun arrives. Almost there now.
Please keep this thread and the wiki updated so I can refer to them later, thanks!
Just concluded the masquerade. Summer continues to fill me with suspicion and paranoia by all the writing around her acting like I should trust her implicitly on top of basically forcing her into my party with no real justification of trust.
On the other hand, the Last Duchess has just insulted London so despite disliking her the least of my completely extraneous hanger-ons I could have just ignored and flown up on Vakeback to deal with all of this on my own, Iâve decided to at least hedge my bets when it comes to learning what I can about the Vulgates.
The Market there has 2 new items and one of them is quite useful, but
Spoiler
you need 500 x Palimpsest Scrap. The good part is that you can buy those this weekend during Rat market, for a surcharge, using NWs. But thatâs the best source anyway!
Less esoteric and more straight forward?
No, we didnât! I have notes of the first 3 chapters, but didnât even managed to start this one yet!
How normal people hire personnel: Multiple interviews, background checks, proofs of competence, incentives are provided to ensure loyalty and alignment of goals.
How writers do it: Enforce a bunch of mysterious and treacherous weirdos to pad the main story with reveals from their past, conflicts, and plot twists.
Not just her name. We basically have confirmation that she is Mary of Burgundy. And the Other Duchess is Margaret of York, the sister of Edward IV and Richard III.
Those are some massive revelations. I havenât finished playing this part, but I am quite sure that this Ghent must not be the real one, but a forgery, an Apocrypha.
Failbetter has always been quite careful with the gameâs backstory so that the world before the fall of London is not too dissimilar to ours (the fall of the previous four cities does not have much of an effect on modern European history: the first was too ancient, the second was a dying city, etc). But Ghent falling and -more importantly- Mary not marrying Maximillian of Austria, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, would have truly staggering historical implications. Long story short, they were the grandparents of Emperor Charles V, and without their marriage the Spanish crown does not go to the Habsburgs (and Spain does not get entangled with imperial ambitions), which changes the whole net of dinastic and political alliances in Europe for the next couple of centuries at the very least.
So I expect some interesting surprises relating to Summerâs theory about someone taking pieces out of history.
I truly hope the game actually follows through on itâs promise to let me backstab Summer the moustache-twiddling villain without a moustache. Sheâs basically a cat with human form but with none of the charm or grace, and Iâd find her arguments of mutual enlightened self-interest more compelling if she specifically wasnât the one making them and also if they werenât predicated on me taking her at face value that sheâs said nothing actionable to the Burgundy Calendar
I havenât actually decided if Iâm definitely going to though, as much as I dislike Summer her business partners are like an army of even worse Summers.
I chose the option to only go along with Summer to the extent our positions were aligned . I will see whether that turned out to be a safe choice, let alone the choice I would have preferred.
Whew, Failbetter has confirmed it was just a bug, they have not introduced secret checks. I was trying to be open-minded about it, but the idea stressed me out!
Just finished the whole thing a few hours ago andâŚwell, up to 3/5ths of the game I was genuinely enjoying it a lot more than the last few Firmament instalments. The last two fifths then completely let me down. It was simultaneously intensely railroad-y and also melodramatic to the point of parody. âBehold: The SUPER Calendar Council, who are here to liberate everything and everyone WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE! Look thereâs so cool they tortured a Master into submission!! Their hands drip blood forever!!!â. Also lmao at the apocryphal King Who Speaks becoming the Judgement benefactor of the Liberation of Night, that straight up reminds me of a certain bad comic book event.
It is also blatantly obvious that youâre not allowed to derail the Feastmen and Calendarâs plans just so the rest of the plot can happen but what really stands out is Maximilian just getting to walk away scott free after declaring himself a proud Liberation agent. In fact, everything attached to Maximilian feels like a bad Genshin Impact subplot in which youâre basically reduced to a camera with legs watching him and the Duchess largely tell rather than show their romantic past. This is completely asinine even by the standards of railroading Firmament has shown in the past, you arenât allowed to so much as hurl a rock at the dishonest twat at the very end.
At this point Iâm bent on encouraging the Duchess to become a tyrant solely because the entire story felt like it was encouraging me to throw in with the Calendar and Feastmen, and ironically they feel more like the de facto malignant controlling authority in the story than Burgundyâs government.
I think I see why karrinblue is confused. There are existing scandal-reducing items that are Fate-free, though so far as I know they can be obtained only by having participated in a particular event. The items are both affiliations: âIn Huffamâs Good Graces,â awarded in part of the aftermath of the story about the Labyrinth of Tigers; and âA Hard-Earned Knack for Repair.â I donât even recall which event resulted in that Affiliation. Was it the flood at the beginning of Firmament? Or one of the âcollapseâ events in London? Maybe when those events come to the Waswood, it will be possible to obtain those Affiliations?
Having finished the chapter, it bothers me slightly that, now that Maximilian of Austria is seemingly going to be a significant character in the story, the game refers to him as⌠Maximilian. It is quite a departure from FLâs naming conventions. Shouldnât he be the Imperial Groom, or somesuch?
